Onward and upward: One World Trade Center towers above all other buildings in Manhattan's Financial District and has now been declared the tallest building in the U.S.
One World Trade Center towers over downtown Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn. It is scheduled to open next year
New look: The spire of 1 World Trade Center was lit up for the first time on last Friday
Rising from the ashes of 9/11, the new World Trade Center tower has punched above the New York skyline to reach its powerfully symbolic height of 1,776 feet and become the tallest building in the country.
The committee of architects, recognized as the arbiters on world building heights, had met to decide whether the tower in the Big Apple or the Windy City was the loftiest.
One World Trade Center stands as a monument to those killed in the terrorist attacks and a ruling against the spire would have dimmed the significance of its height which symbolizes America's founding year of 1776. Without the needle, the building measures 1,368 feet.
What's more, the decision was made by an organization based in Chicago, whose cultural and architectural history is embodied by the Willis - formerly Sears - Tower.
Tallest towers: Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, in Chicago on March 12, 2008 (left) and One World Trade Center in New York on September 5, 2013 (right)
Topping out: The 104-floor One World Trade beats out 110-floor Willis Tower - now that its spire is deemed admissible - and is shown in comparison to the world's other tallest buildings
'Most of the time these decisions are not so controversial,' said Daniel Safarik, an architect and spokesman for the nonprofit Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
The 30 members of its Height Committee met to render a judgment behind closed doors in Chicago, where the world's first skyscraper appeared in 1884.
The question over One World Trade Center, which remains under construction and is expected to open next year, arose because of a change to the design of its tower-topping needle.
Colorful: The new World Trade Center tower has punched above the New York skyline to reach its powerfully symbolic height of 1,776 feet and become the tallest building in the country. Or has it?
To the point: A committee of architects recognized as the arbiters on world building heights is meeting in Chicago to decide whether a design change affecting One World Trade Center's needle disqualifies its hundreds of feet from being counted
One World Trade Center is officially tallest building in US
But One World Trade Center is a monument to American resilience admired well beyond Manhattan.
'I don't think anybody's going to argue with the pride in building that new tower,' said 31-year-old software developer Brett Tooley, who works across the street from the Willis Tower.
'Not only is it going to be the tallest building; it's going to be one of the strongest buildings in the history of America. It's a marvel of engineering.'
From great heights: Anna Kane, five, looks down from the glass balcony called The Ledge, suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jutting four feet out from the Willis Tower's 103rd floor Skydeck
'We take our hats off to them out here in Chicago and the Midwest,' said Robert Wislow, chairman and chief executive of U.S. Equities, the firm that manages the Willis Tower.
'And we welcome the building to the elite club of the tallest buildings in the world. Nobody's looking at this like a competition.'
The Willis has a central place in Chicago's history, speaking to the city's own tradition of recovering from adversity ever since the 1871 Great Fire and its history of creating architectural marvels, said Peter Alter, an archivist at the Chicago History Museum.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, headquartered in Chicago, also designed the Willis, which opened as Sears Tower in 1973 and remained the tallest building in the world until 1996 when the council ruled that the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, had knocked it from the top spot.
And the Willis can still claim to get visitors up higher: The highest occupied floor in the 1,450-foot (not including antenna height), 110-story Willis Tower is still higher up than that of the 104-story One World Trade Center.
Rising from the ashes: One World Trade Center, built at the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York
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